[cavemonkey50]

Is it possible to add intelligent am/pm detection when quickly typing in times in the due/start columns?

For example, currently typing 'wed 3' will set the time to this coming Wednesday at 3am. That wouldn't make much sense to have something due at 3am. 3pm would be the logical time.

I know I can do 'wed 3p' to specify 3pm, but it would be nice if OmniFocus could make a guess at what time would make sense. I also understand there are some situations where there is no logical choice (8-11), but it would be nice if the obvious ones could be auto detected.

Google Calendar does this and I've become quite used to it, so it would be awesome if OmniFocus could get it. Thanks.

[Trey]

Let me start just by applauding OmniFocus's developers for tackling the natural-language date/times at all. It's great!

But there are some that don't seem to work right:

• "next friday" currently (it's Thursday here right now) is equivalent to "tomorrow". "Next" in general seems to be just ignored. "Next Friday" should be 8 days from now. "Last" uses similar logic, so "last wednesday" is equivalent to "yesterday", which I also think is wrong.
• "5pm tomorrow" becomes "12/5/07 12:00 AM". That's just wrong. "tomorrow 5pm" does the right thing. It looks like in general that you have to specify time after you specify date. I keep forgetting to do that—can't both be accepted?
• "noon" and "midnight" are understood, and "afternoon" seems to be a synonym for "noon" (weird--maybe 3pm would be better?), but "morning" and "night" are equivalent (and both midnight), which is weird—though perhaps true in a technical sense, since midnight is both morning and night, I don't think it's a helpful interpretation. I think at one point "night" was set to 11pm, so perhaps there was a regression, but I may be imagining that. I'd suggest "morning" be 8 or 9am, "afternoon" be 2 or 3pm, "evening" be 7 or 8pm, "night" be 10 or 11pm.
• I keep wanting to use "eob" (end of business) or "cob" (close of business) or "eod" (end of day), since these are common terms in the workplace. Bizarrely, these all seem to get interpreted as the beginning of the current month.
• "This month" is interpreted at Dec. 10. I don't know why that is, shouldn't it be interpreted as Dec 1, or as "now"?

Maybe others can add examples of strange handling of English dates.

Again, it's nice that OmniFocus tries to handle English dates, but right now it's in a state where I can't really trust it—I feel I need to double-check the date in the inspector before committing, which makes quick entry a pain (since the only way to verify the full date/time in the Quick Entry window is to click the calendar icon).

[Trey]

I just noticed that "+3h" in interpreted as "three hours from this time, December 1st". That's a bug, isn't it? "now +3h" does the right thing, but shouldn't just "+3h" be relative to "now", not "this time at the beginning of the month"?

[cavemonkey50]

I agree with Trey completely on those enhancements as well.

[xmas]

Originally Posted by Trey

I just noticed that "+3h" in interpreted as "three hours from this time, December 1st". That's a bug, isn't it? "now +3h" does the right thing, but shouldn't just "+3h" be relative to "now", not "this time at the beginning of the month"?

yeah, this is a bug for sure.

I'll look at it.

[xmas]

Originally Posted by Trey

Let me start just by applauding OmniFocus's developers for tackling the natural-language date/times at all. It's great!

But there are some that don't seem to work right:

• "next friday" currently (it's Thursday here right now) is equivalent to "tomorrow". "Next" in general seems to be just ignored. "Next Friday" should be 8 days from now. "Last" uses similar logic, so "last wednesday" is equivalent to "yesterday", which I also think is wrong.
• "5pm tomorrow" becomes "12/5/07 12:00 AM". That's just wrong. "tomorrow 5pm" does the right thing. It looks like in general that you have to specify time after you specify date. I keep forgetting to do that—can't both be accepted?
• "noon" and "midnight" are understood, and "afternoon" seems to be a synonym for "noon" (weird--maybe 3pm would be better?), but "morning" and "night" are equivalent (and both midnight), which is weird—though perhaps true in a technical sense, since midnight is both morning and night, I don't think it's a helpful interpretation. I think at one point "night" was set to 11pm, so perhaps there was a regression, but I may be imagining that. I'd suggest "morning" be 8 or 9am, "afternoon" be 2 or 3pm, "evening" be 7 or 8pm, "night" be 10 or 11pm.
• I keep wanting to use "eob" (end of business) or "cob" (close of business) or "eod" (end of day), since these are common terms in the workplace. Bizarrely, these all seem to get interpreted as the beginning of the current month.
• "This month" is interpreted at Dec. 10. I don't know why that is, shouldn't it be interpreted as Dec 1, or as "now"?

Maybe others can add examples of strange handling of English dates.

Again, it's nice that OmniFocus tries to handle English dates, but right now it's in a state where I can't really trust it—I feel I need to double-check the date in the inspector before committing, which makes quick entry a pain (since the only way to verify the full date/time in the Quick Entry window is to click the calendar icon).

on "next"... We won't be able to start looking this again till after 1.0.

"5pm tomorrow" vs. "tomorrow 5pm", this is a bug.

"noon, midnight, afternoon, morning, night, evening, eob, cob" I've only actually added support for "noon" as of right now. I'll see about adding more time-words.

"This month", there is no actual concept of "this" right now... I'm not sure what it should be. This is a bug at some level, since right now I'm ignoring stuff I don't know, like "this" and matching the first thing I can, which is "mon" so you're getting dec 10 since its the next monday :) A bug has been filed on this already.